We love apps. We love free apps. And we love paid apps that cost nothing most of all. But we don't like pirates, so if you have an eye patch on your face and a parrot on your shoulder, be gone with ye! Having said that, there's plenty of legal ways to get paid apps for free for your Android so today we're going to share a few with you. Update: one of the simplest tricks has just been made even sweeter, see below for more details!
Amazon App of the Day
The Amazon Appstore may be the oft-forgotten little brother of the Google Play Store, but one of the great things about Amazon being second best is that they offer up a free app every day to drag your attention away from Google's monster market. You have options on how to get this, just hit theAmazon Appstore online to see the App of the Day listed up the top, download the Amazon Appstore app or grab a notification app like Free App Notifier for Amazon (note, it only works for the US Amazon Appstore right now) for daily alerts.
AppGratis
AppGratis is one of my favorite apps because every morning I'm greeted by another new app for free. There's no overload of offers – just one app a day – curated by Sam the ever comical developer with the bad jokes. Sometimes the free apps offered by AppGratis won't be eligible for updates, so keep that in mind, and not every free app offered ever cost anything in the first place! Nevertheless, the AppGratis deals just keep coming and there's often some real gems in there.
Google Play surveys
We've written about Google's free Play Store credit in exchange for answering surveys before. If you're not aware of it yet, Google offers it's very own rewards program because, well, they want even more information about you and your habits. Simply install the Google Opinion Rewards app, fill in a short survey and collect your coinage. You're limited to one survey a week (so you can't exactly retire early), and I've seen reports that you don't always get paid for every survey, but you can earn up to a dollar per survey. Not bad for a few minutes of your time. There's another app called Get Paid Apps Free that has you watch short videos or download selected apps in exchange for credit that can be cashed out to buy other apps in the Play Store.
App of the Day
App of the Day does basically the same thing as AppGratis and Amazon, offering a paid app for free (or discounted) for a limited time only. There's lots of different versions of this app, so you need to get the one relevant to your location (otherwise the Play Store will tell you it is incompatible with your devices), but once you've got it installed you can add it to your daily check list for scoring paid apps for free. I should also note that other apps, like App Sales, let you add apps you're interested in to a watch list, so you can be notified when they go on sale. Not exactly free but still better than full price. Plus, App Sales occasionally post free apps too.
Google Play return policy
If you're interested in a game and actually don't mind spending a few bucks on it but don't want to commit unless you know it's actually worth it, then you can take advantage of Google's returns policy for apps. When you pay for an app you've got a whole 15 minutes to test it out before you are stuck with the purchase. A quarter of an hour may not seem like a long time, but it's definitely long enough to get a feel for a game and know if you actually want to pay for it or not. There's another trick where you can try out paid apps for free in the Play Store for a whole 48 hours. And if you're really, really skint you could manufacture a night's entertainment out of just your phone and a stopwatch!
Update: Google has revised its fifteen-minute window for refunds on purchased games, so now you have a whole two hours to play before deciding if you really want to pay for that game or just play for a while and then refund your money.
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